The Odds.
Right. I'm not sure if this will take off or not. I know there's a lot of Hunger Games type AU's going around right now and I really wasn't going to add to the pile but this came into my head and wouldn't go away and I got really excited about it and wrote like ten thousand words.
It's going to include the whole glee club. There WILL be character death, I can't promise how much but major characters will die. However Kurt and Blaine will NOT die. This is a Klaine fic but there'll be lots of other ships getting their moments, given how many of them are in it.
I hope you enjoy. If there'll be smut in a chapter I'll let you know, but it won't be for a good few chapters.
I don't own Glee and I don't own The Hunger Games.
Chapter 1 – District 1.
Kurt was pretty sure it was the knot of dread in his stomach that woke him that morning. It wasn't the light, because the ragged curtain was still drawn and anyway when he checked there was only the beginnings of morning light touching what he always thought to be a pretty ugly place to live.
His stomach was somersaulting, tied in knots, butterflies flipping through – whichever corny, overused expression you wanted to use, Kurt felt it.
It was reaping day, and he'd had a bad feeling about it from the get go.
Not just because his name was in the reaping ball ten times (which wasn't as much as a lot of the kids he knew, but a lot more than some) but because he had this feeling he couldn't shake.
The feeling that he was going to be selected, and Kurt prided himself on his intuition, on knowing himself. He had never been wrong yet.
Not that he was sharing said feeling with anyone. He would volunteer himself before he worried his dad with anything like that. His dad. The main reason he'd do anything to avoid the god damn stupid games.
Kurt didn't have any friends. He couldn't ever remember having any, not even when he was a little kid. When all the others paired off to play soccer or braid each other's hair or whatever it was kids did, Kurt just...didn't. He'd always been different and for that reason he'd always been alone.
As he got older his differences became only more striking. The fact that he grew up into an attractive yet delicate looking boy with perfectly coiffed hair, pale creamy skin, a high voice and an intense interest in clothes meant he drifted even farther away from the crowd.
Neither girls nor boys seemed interested in getting to know him, and he knew the fact that he was gay didn't really help, but at the same time he knew it wasn't just that, as much as he'd like to blame that. It was because he acted superior to them, and he knew it.
He felt superior though, felt too good for the district, wanted to do something that wasn't just work in a factory. He wanted to design clothes or sing to lots of people. He wanted to get out of district one and never look back.
Such ideas were sneered at. You were born you worked you lived and you died. Simple as that. Hopefully you married someone you loved, if not you married someone you could get along with. Kurt didn't want that either. He wanted love that stopped him in his tracks, felt like a punch in the stomach. He wanted someone he couldn't live without.
So not only did nobody ever particularly want to befriend Kurt Hummel, he didn't particularly want to befriend them. To him, any friends here were futile, pointless, unnecessary. They were all uninteresting people anyway. Apart from his father, pretty much everyone in district 1 could go screw themselves.
Kurt glanced out of the window and realised the sun had completely risen, and he pulled himself out of bed, dressing quickly and preparing breakfast for his father. He wished more than anything he could give him more, but they weren't well off, and food wasn't always easy to come by. They had never staved, but nonetheless they had to ration carefully. Kurt's mother had died when he was eight years old, and his father was all he had family wise, and was the most important person in his world. Looking after him always came first.
Time passed way too quickly for either Kurt or his father, Burt's, liking. His dad looked even more tense than he did as they sat at the table together, talking about anything that wasn't the reaping.
However, time always has to pass, and pass it did, until it was time for Kurt to leave. Capitol law stated that parents had to stay behind at the houses whilst reaping took place, something which pleased and upset Kurt at the same time. Every time he wasn't picked he ran home as fast as he could after, to let his dad know they were safe for another year, while at the same time he knew if he was picked, the last thing he'd want was for his father to see it happen.
"I love you, Kurt." His dad whispered, pulling Kurt close and whispering the words into Kurt's hair, "so much."
"I love you too, dad." Kurt replied fiercely, before pulling back. "Don't worry, ok? About anything. I've got this."
"I always worry about you kiddo, always will. You're my baby." Burt smiled sadly, and Kurt hugged his father one last time before walking out and towards the town centre where the reaping always took place.
It was Kurt's fifth reaping, and he knew the drill by now. File in...line up...blood taken...line up again. Watch the scared faces around you. Wonder who it'll be. Wonder if it'll be you. Watch a badly dressed Capitol citizen tell you stupid propaganda about the games. Same old, same old. It was Kurt's fifth reaping, and they never got easier, just more repetitive, more infuriating.
He'd learnt to tune out of the stupid Capitol citizen by now saying Happy Hunger Games and May the odds be EVER in your favour! Because it wound him up too much to listen to.
The odds weren't in my favour the second I was born into this godforsaken district. Kurt thought darkly, as the woman blathered on about dedication and sacrifice, like she'd ever sacrificed anything in her life, except possibly her fashion sense, given the horrific make up, hair and clothes she was sporting. In all five years, Kurt had never seen a well dressed Capitol man or woman.
"Ladies first." The overdone, horrifically ugly and made up to the nines Capitol woman screeched, and she dipped her manicured nails into the reaping ball. "Your female tribute is..." Pause for dramatic effect, like it's some kind of fucking game show. "Quinn Fabray!"
Kurt couldn't help blanching. This was a turn up for the books.
The odds were always in Quinn Fabray's favour. Her father owned the biggest jewellery factory in the district, meaning he and his wife and their two daughters, Quinn, eighteen and Hope, thirteen, had always been filthy rich and not afraid to show it. For this reason Quinn only had the minimum number of names in the ball. Claiming tesserae, which gave a family enough grain and oil to survive on for a year per person and added one extra of your name to the reaping ball, was something Quinn Fabray would never have to do.
And yet she had just been reaped, proving that the odds didn't always sway to the poor or the desperate, but sometimes to the rich, the beautiful, the seemingly lucky. Kurt was unsure how to react to it.
Because Quinn was all of the above. The most beautiful girl Kurt had ever seen (because if he were into girls, he would definitely be into Quinn, if she wasn't such a bitch) with her long blonde hair and creamy skin and lithe figure and almond shaped hazel eyes. And she was rich because of Daddy's business, and went around flitting from boy to boy, enjoying the high life while most of the district (like Kurt) struggled, working every hour they could just to feed their family the basic minimum food they could afford.
So Kurt should have felt smug that she'd been reaped, but Kurt wasn't like that. He would never be like that. Had gone through enough reapings, enough heartache, had lost enough. He had a shred of empathy, he would never find these games anything other than a horrific, sickening way of the Capitol getting the enjoyment they so clearly craved, the monsters.
In short, Kurt was snarky, sarcastic, sometimes rude and always honest, but he wasn't mean. No one, and he meant no one deserved to go through what Quinn was about to be put through.
He glanced up and saw Quinn walking shakily towards the stage, where two peacekeepers helped her up on stage, and she stood beside them, trembling like a leaf, her head bent so her soft blonde hair covered her face.
"Quinn Fabray, everyone! Yay! I do love this bit!" The Capitol woman said, and Kurt had to stop himself from snorting aloud as she continued. "And the male tribute joining Miss Fabray in the games this year will be..." She rustled her fingers around the papers and flicked one out elegantly, before opening it and reading the name.
"Kurt Hummel."
Kurt felt like he'd been plunged underwater, a roaring filled his head and his ears and he could feel every eye in the courtyard on him, and his heart was hammering so hard he felt like he might faint.
Was this what going into shock felt like? His feet wouldn't move, his head felt heavy, his lungs felt tight and his breathing shook.
"Come on, Kurt. Come on, up you come you lucky boy!"
Lucky? Even in his shocked state he wanted to slap that Capitol bitch into next week for ever, ever suggesting that he was lucky to be selected. His entire body felt numb, right down to his lips, and he swallowed a huge lump in his throat as he walked forward on trembling legs, two peacekeepers at his side. He climbed up and took his place beside Quinn, who still refused to look up from her pale blue pumps.
"Well go on! Shake hands!" The shrill woman encouraged, and Quinn finally lifted her head up and reluctantly held out a limp hand. Kurt took it and shook it, and then they were both turned to face the crowd of relieved, shocked people in front of them.
He could see it on their faces. Poor Quinn Fabray. That faggot Kurt Hummel won't last five minutes. Thank fuck it wasn't me.
"District one your tributes for the seventy fourth annual hunger games, Quinn Fabray and Kurt Hummel!"
